A Proposal for a New World Map and Two New Sports Complexes: This Week’s Review

This week’s stories share a common thread: the value of looking beyond established frameworks. Two French-Moroccan architects reflected on what architecture can learn from Moroccan culture and local knowledge, while the United Nations General Assembly voted to promote world map projections that more accurately represent the relative size of continents- a symbolic shift that challenges centuries of Eurocentric geographical representation, with direct implications for how we understand Africa and the Global South. A similar spirit of questioning convention runs through this week’s featured projects, from city governments repurposing abandoned buildings for circular construction to the German Pavilion for the upcoming Venice Architecture Biennale addressing social isolation and democratic coexistence. On the Radar this week, we cover three recently announced projects: a new multifunctional sports complex in Hilversum that brings together sport, education, and community life around a continuous interior circuit; a low-density residential district in Yerevan where landscape restoration preceded construction; and a landscaped public plaza commissioned by the Las Vegas Raiders to replace underutilized parking lots adjacent to Allegiant Stadium.